{"id":12016,"date":"2012-10-06T16:06:01","date_gmt":"2012-10-06T03:06:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/awsdev.leaderkit.com\/?p=12016"},"modified":"2016-01-05T13:48:22","modified_gmt":"2016-01-05T00:48:22","slug":"what-is-strategy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/leaderkit.com\/solutions\/what-is-strategy\/","title":{"rendered":"What is strategy?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Have you ever talked strategy and thought “actually, what is strategy?”<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

I have the privilege of interacting with a lot of companies as they articulate strategy inside Leaderkit.
\nIt’s pretty clear, that ‘strategy’ is harder and less well understood than many other business concepts.<\/p>\n

Let’s try and build a concise, powerful definition of strategy then.<\/p>\n

\n

Wikipedia describes strategy as ‘a plan of action designed to achieve a specific goal’<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

\"bomber2\"The Allied strategy to defeat Germany in WWII was to disrupt her war machine through airborne bombing, engage on multiple fronts and invade.<\/p>\n

In a business context, strategy is simply the ‘how to’ of achieving worthwhile goals for your stakeholders. \u00a0Your strategic plan is simply the document that captures that.<\/p>\n

Michael Porter’s work is helpful in articulating this ‘how to’. He distills strategy down to just two root forms: cost leadership and differentiation. Differentiation is the offer of a unique product valued by a set of customers.<\/p>\n

So let’s start defining strategy. \u00a0We’ll fit it into a broader framework so we can include the natural object of strategy: the goal we want to achieve for our stakeholders.<\/p>\n

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  1. What long-term goal shall we set for our stakeholders? (vision)<\/li>\n
  2. What product or service is of particular value to a group of customers?
    \n(value proposition and target customer)Note:<\/strong> I’ve described the goal as ‘long-term’ \u2013 achieving worthwhile business outcomes takes time.This leads to another question:<\/li>\n
  3. How can we deliver that proposition in a superior way to the competition over time?
    \n(competitive advantage)<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
    Jim Collins<\/a> (author of Good to Great<\/a>) adds value here with his hedgehog concept:<\/div>\n
    \n